A rebate program is a common tool for delivering added-value to consumers, and thus motivating incremental sales for a sponsor of the rebate program. The sponsor is usually a manufacturer. although other parties can individually or collectively sponsor the rebate program. Rebates typically require consumers to mail-in a purchase receipt and possibly other items, after which they receive a rebate check or gift card by mail. Manufacturers typically use third party service providers to handle in-bound mail receipts, verification, and production/delivery of rebate checks or gift cards.
Rebates are typically offered across all of the manufacturer's key distribution points such that a consumer can obtain the rebate from any particular merchant selling the manufacturer's products. Typical requirements of a standard rebate program usually involve a rebate offer pertaining to a specific product or service that can be uniquely identified such as by a Universal Product Code (UPC) or a stock-keeping unit (SKU). The manufacturer usually requires something physical to be returned by the consumer to track situations where the product purchased under a rebate program is returned after the rebate is sent to the consumer. For example, a consumer may be required to tear off and send back to the manufacturer a UPC, often appearing as a bar code, on packaging of a purchased product. The UPC will be required under the rebate program in order to have the requested rebate processed and paid.
The manufacturer's economic model assumes ‘slippage’, meaning that the process of collecting and mailing in the required items can discourage a consumer from responding to the rebate offer. The consumer, after shopping for a rebate eligible product or service, may forget, or lack the initiative, to collect all of the required rebate paperwork, fill out the required rebate forms, and properly address a mailing of the executed paper work to make a claim for the rebate. In fact, not all purchasers will go through with all of the steps that are required in order to get the rebate in a specified time frame. Also, consumers may submit incorrect or illegible data and nonconforming information. As a result of this lack of rebate program compliance by consumers, a substantial percentage of all rebates never get redeemed. As such, fewer rebates are paid by the rebate sponsors who, therefore, have an incentive to keep rebate redemption rates down by setting strict and rigorous rebate program rules. These rules may include limited filing periods, long processing time frames, rigorous requests for personal information, etc. As such, even substantially completed rebate forms might allow the corresponding rebate to be denied under rebate program's rules.
Another deterrent for consumers to participate in a rebate program is that there can be uncertainty around the rebate process. This uncertainty, in some cases, is because consumers have no way to find out if their submission of a rebate claim was received, if the claim had been verified for payment, or when the rebate will be paid.
For those consumers that actually do receive a rebate check or gift card in the mail, some paper rebate checks or gift cards are tossed in the trash by the consumer because they can be packaged in envelopes that look like ‘junk mail’. The consumer behavior, often referred to as “breakage”, occurs where a rebate is mailed but not redeemed or cashed by the mail recipient.
For the manufacturer or other sponsor of a rebate program, the cost of implementing a rebate program via physical processes (use of mail delivery services and paper rebate checks) is substantial on a per-rebate basis. The process makes it challenging to limit rebates to select distribution points (i.e., retailers) or to vary the rebate amount by the specific retailer. The cost of rebate program implementation also creates hurdles for partnerships between manufacturers and payment brands (e.g., Visa, Master Card, American Express, etc.) on rebate offers, since the necessary data is not easily obtained or easily used for processing rebates in the current prior art processes. On the other hand, retailers and manufacturers are in favor of rebates because they allow the consumer to focus, at the Point of Service terminal (POS), on paying the discounted, rebate price for a product or service, although the consumer is actually paying full price at the POS.
There is a need in the art to solve the forgoing rebate program problems.